1. Field
The present disclosure generally relates to transmission of data over a network, and more particularly to the use of a computing device to communicate with medical devices over a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Medical ventilators (colloquially called “respirators”) are machines that are typically used to mechanically move breathable air into and out of lungs in order to assist a patient in breathing. Ventilators are chiefly used in intensive care medicine, home care, emergency medicine, and anesthesia. Common ventilators are limited to a single direction of communication, and as such are configured to provide information related to the ventilator for display, but not receive information from a remote source to control the ventilator. For example, common ventilators send outbound data to another entity, such as a display device, in order to display ventilator settings.
Health care professionals in a health care facility typically need to be in physical proximity to a ventilator (e.g., next to the ventilator) in order to view ventilator information for a patient. It is difficult, however, for health care professionals such as respiratory therapists to be physically near each of many patients the therapist is responsible for in order to monitor the ventilation of each of the patients. Thus, a therapist monitoring a ventilator of one patient is unable to concurrently monitor the ventilator of another patient. As a result, vital health information for a patient on a ventilator may not be seen by the therapist until it is too late, or, in certain circumstances, may never be seen by the therapist. In such circumstances, the health care facility in which the therapist and patients are present may suffer economic loss from inefficient use of ventilators for their patients, or, more importantly, may incur negative health consequences for patients due to an inability to monitor the ventilators of multiple patients with a limited number of therapists.